A Cu—Be alloy is formed by adding beryllium to copper so as to provide a Cu based alloy having age-hardening properties. While a Cu—Be alloy containing 2% of Be has a relatively low tensile strength of about 0.5 GPa just after a solution heat treatment, the strength will be increased up to 1.5 GPa through age hardening. By taking advantages of its age-hardening properties and excellent corrosion resistance, the Cu—Be alloy containing 2% of Be is widely used as high-performance and high-reliability springs in various fields such as electronic industries and telecommunication equipment industries. It can also be used as other various products such as molding dies for plastic materials and safety machine tools free from spark caused by a mechanical impact. A Cu—Be alloy containing 1% or less of Be is used to utilize its high electric conductivity.
Heretofore, particular alloys such as Fe-based, Co-based and Ni-based alloys have been able to be formed in an amorphous phase to obtain an excellent strength, elasticity and corrosion resistance superior to those in its crystalline phase. It has also been known that the amorphous alloys exhibit excellent superplastic-forming properties in a supercooled liquid temperature range.
As an amorphous alloy containing a relatively large amount of Cu, there has been known a glassy alloy containing Zr, Ti, Cu and Ni, which is disclosed in domestic republication of PCT international publication for patent applications Ser. Nos. JP10-512014 and JP8-508545. In this context, the inventors have achieved an invention of an improved Cu-based amorphous alloy and applied for a patent (Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-397007).
The conventional Cu—Be crystalline alloy can be formed into a bulk alloy but with a lower strength than that of an amorphous alloy. Besides, a viscous-flow-like superplastic forming cannot be applied to such a Cu—Be crystalline alloy. On the other hand, it has been known that in a heating process, a particular amorphous alloy exhibits a supercooled liquid phase allowing the viscous-flow-like superplastic forming, before the initiation of crystallization. In this temperature range allowing the formation of the supercooled liquid phase, the amorphous alloy can be formed into a product having any desired shape through a plastic forming. Further, an alloy having a high glass-forming ability can be formed as a bulk amorphous alloy through a copper-mold casting method.